Advertising Sector Scorecard - Thematic Intelligence

Big Tech, notably Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet, dominate the thematic screen of the publisher's advertising sector scorecard. Thanks to their sophisticated AI systems, advanced advertising technology (adtech), and the wealth of data they possess, they are best placed to reap the benefits of disruptive themes like AI, gaming, and ecommerce. But these companies will also have regulators breathing down on their necks on several issues, from antitrust and data privacy to misinformation and online harm. For example, while top performers Microsoft and Apple remain shielded from data privacy scrutiny, they stand accused of anti-competitive practices around their cloud and app store operations.

Key Highlights

Meta's financial recovery following last year's decline has been impressive, with its share price more than doubling this year. The company appears to be shifting focus away from the metaverse to AI while trying to stay relevant amidst tight competition from newer social media platforms like TikTok. Its new app, Threads, fits perfectly into this strategy and was launched at a time when the advertising sector is desperate to find a more reliable alternative to Twitter, which has recently shown a more relaxed approach to content moderation. Twitter has also annoyed users by limiting how many posts users can view. It is too early to say whether Threads will manage to erode Twitter's user base, but given that the app links to existing Instagram accounts, it should benefit from strong network effects.

Scope

• This sector scorecard provides a top-down, comprehensive outlook for the key players in the advertising sector over the next two years, based on the key themes set to transform their industry landscape.

Reasons to Buy

• Companies that invest in the right themes become success stories. Those that miss the important themes in their industry end up as failures.
• The publisher's thematic research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors. It has a proven track record of identifying the important themes early, enabling companies to make the right investments ahead of the competition, and secure that all-important competitive advantage.
• The publisher has developed a unique thematic methodology for ranking all major companies in all major sectors based on their relative strength in the big themes that are impacting their industries.
• Our thematic engine tags over 145 million data items across five alternative data sets - patents, jobs, deals, filings, and news - to themes. The vast datasets within our thematic engine help our analysts to produce sector scorecards that identify the companies best placed to succeed in a future filled with multiple disruptive threats.